I’m not entirely sure how I’m writing right now. Today [Monday] I went to my endocrinologist for an appointment I would’ve rescheduled if I hadn’t already done so three times in as many months. It was the second time I’d left the house in 2018. The first was six days ago for a podcast taping.

The fingers on my left hand won’t stay still. A burning sensation emanates from my lower back and sends sparks of pain to every reach of my body. I’ve smoked twice since returning from the doctor. It’s dulled the pain enough that I’m not entirely focused on it; it’s also made it difficult to concentrate on anything else for very long. I haven’t left the smoked-out basement; the cold keeps the sweating at bay and numbs me a little.

I’d have a hard time focusing regardless. I’ve swung between diurnal and nocturnal multiple times this week. I slept until 11 am on Saturday, stayed up until 10 am on Sunday, napped until 2 pm, when I needed to take a dose of two medications, crashed from 4-10 pm—even though my infinitely understanding girlfriend came over at 7—then managed a semi-normal 1-to-10 am sleep last night. I have no idea when, or if, I’ll sleep tonight.

Over the last couple weeks, I’ve been unable to do my job even though I can do it entirely from home. It takes a high level of effort and concentration to do something as simple as bringing the dishes down from my room. I work if I feel up to it. The more formulaic posts, like previews and recaps, are easier to wrap my head around than the analytical stuff I usually prefer.

If I don’t work, the most stimulating thing I’m capable of doing is play my PS4, and even then I often need to turn it off or only play parts of games with no bright lights or sudden movement. (Thank you, NBA2K franchise mode.) I often play with the sound off or calm music on instead of game sound. It’s a needed distraction that’s less passive, and therefore more effective, than watching TV. I wish I had the energy and focus to read a book instead. I spend most of the day somewhere short of conscious.

I lean—too hard, it feels—on my housemates and girlfriend and family to keep me from living in filth.* This isn’t an exaggeration. At my lowest point in college, when I lived alone in a basement apartment before I was diagnosed, I reached into a bag of chips I’d been eating out of and pulled out a maggot.** The guilt of not doing my share around the house nags at me. My housemates have lives and full-time jobs and problems of their own. Cleaning up after a 30-year-old wasn’t in the lease. I also feel guilty that people worry about me, though apparently not quite enough to not write this piece.

Hey guys! As you may have noticed, the theme of this week on the blog is "nah." When I thought to myself "I should start a Michigan blog" back in 2004 I did not anticipate that about every three years things would descend into a melee of recriminations and stupidity. Insofar as it's possible I am opting out of this edition.

I could point out various reasons that things aren't going well again, but what's the point? I've already said the things, and people willing to listen have already read them. What's the point in arguing with this guy who's all up in my inbox?

Brian, your mattress story ,while creative in another genre, makes michigan football fans look like a bunch of smoked out , entitled, arrogant assholes. How so? It puts an emphasis on quirky,smarter than the rest of football fan bases,and takes away from the team of mostly working class players whom have little in common with you or most of your followers.

Its time to end this little money making with little to no sweat, blood,or tears called mgoblog while profitting off the Michigan athletes and get a real job...oh wait, that is not in your genetic makeup.

There isn't one. Nor is there a point in arguing with people who don't think Brady Hoke and his #37 and #20 2014-15 recruiting classes don't still have an impact on Michigan's performance. While assaulting previous regimes for failures has been somewhere between plausible and a holy quest, to do so after this start from Harbaugh...

In Harbaugh’s first season, Michigan doubled its win total from five to 10 and improved from 48th in S&P+ to fifth. The Wolverines won seven games by at least 21 points and lost to only three opponents (Utah, Michigan State, Ohio State) that combined to go 34-7. Against Utah, they lost because of a pick six. Against Michigan State, well, you remember that one. Not a bad debut.

In 2016, Michigan came within a spot of the Big Ten East title. If officials mark J.T. Barrett’s fourth-down conversion attempt slightly differently, the Wolverines go to the Big Ten title game and likely go to the College Football Playoff. As it stands, they merely backed up the previous season with another 10-3 record, another top-five S&P+ finish, and losses by a combined three points against Ohio State and Florida State teams that won 21 games. All this despite a late-season shoulder injury to quarterback Wilton Speight.

...given Harbaugh's track record is asinine. To do so after Michigan returned the fewest starters of any Power 5 team and lost their top quarterback, left tackle, and wide receiver to injury is brain dead. Yes, I thought things would be going better, but my preseason prediction didn't bake in injuries to Speight and Black; without those the chances that Michigan is headed towards 9-3 at worst are what, 90%? Have we already forgotten what a truly bad team looks like?

I get it if you're a rival and you're getting your yucks in. If you're a Michigan fan and your reaction isn't along the lines of "well, this is very disappointing but lets see what happens next year" I don't want to talk to you. Because what good would it do?

This happened so long ago that I don't remember why this daft idea came into my head. But the thing the daft idea spawned still exists and reminds me every Monday that I need to take the trash out. It has been part of my life probably about as long as my wife has. Longer. We go back, this thing and I.

It is a Kylie Minogue-seeded Pandora station. Kylie Minogue is an Australian pop chanteuse who was massively popular in the UK and Ireland about 15 years ago, about when I spent a summer in Ireland because it seemed like a good idea at the time. (Spoiler: it was a good idea.)

I am trying to get the station to play Korn. Because they both start with K, get it? I call it Kylie To Korn because I am an admirably direct person, or uncreative. I have checked that Pandora will play Korn, because God how disappointing that would be if I found out it wouldn't.

At this point I urge the reader not to get all judgy about the destination. Hearing Korn is not, say, beating Ohio State and then winning the national title. Hearing Korn is a disappointing experience for everyone except a very select and shrinking subset of aging nu-metal enthusiasts. Korn is no longer a band. It is an abstract concept. I mean this literally and figuratively. When you think about Korn think about a quixotic, meaningless quest that has become deeply embedded in your very being by sheer dint of longevity, and how it would feel if you finally reached the promised land. You wouldn't even hear the Korn. You'd hear Handel's Messiah.

I will not make a Hanson To Handel Pandora station.

I will not.

I made promises to people.

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you are and then you aren't [Patrick Barron]

Here's Michigan football a year after This Is The Year. Good news! It was pretty much the year, what with Michigan hogwalloping everyone they came across until a very weird, punter-focused night in Iowa City. If Kenny Allen hadn't gone on the fritz against Wisconsin, Michigan would have started the year by cruising to nine straight two-score-plus wins. Everyone got drafted. Multipleoutlets have declared their 78-0 whomping of Rutgers one of the worst football games every played. Fancystats loved Michigan, and lo, they should have.

Even after The Year ended with what can only be described as a wet fart, ludicrously optimistic predictions weren't actually far off. Their losses were by one point, three points (in double overtime), and one point, all more or less on the road, two of them with a severely damaged starting quarterback. Michigan went into Columbus and felt like the better team for 75 of the 60 minutes. Amidst this very cathartic feeling they suffered a cripplingly sad series of maximally-devastating setbacks that allowed OSU to escape their own stadium with a win, thereby obliterating the feeling. A few weeks earlier, Penn State blocked 75 different Ohio State kicks, punts, twitter accounts, cheerleaders, pieces of legislation, and novelty license plate holders to acquire a not-at-all dubious victory, because life is fair and everyone gets what they deserve.

FUCK!

Anyway.

What I'm trying to say here is that despite the brutal end to the season, Michigan was good as hell last year. They weren't good enough to survive their QB melting down or a referee rogering in Columbus or the absence of both Jabrill Peppers and the offensive line, but in a slightly different universe they were. One where Speight's a tiny bit more accurate or Darboh's a tiny bit better at catching passes a tiny bit behind him. And while it sucks so much that This Is The Year was a 10-3 jam—please see previous paragraph—if we can get past the, like, wins, man, we can see a deeper truth. Because wins are a social construction, man.

What's more important than wins, he said, sobbing softly onto his keyboard, is what Michigan looked and felt like once it became a Jim Harbaugh/Don Brown co-production. Harbaugh made the best possible hire at DC—college DC lifer with an insane track record and spread specialization—and followed that up by adding Greg Frey and Pep freakin' Hamilton at the same time he loaded Michigan to the gills with highly touted space cowboys who are not only highly touted recruits but also future astronaut doctors. Astrodocs. Whatever the technical term is.

This is a transition year between The Year and The Year, unless it isn't. They'll have to get lucky on a couple freshmen and one right tackle, but teams have been luckier. Just not Michigan.

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the author the first time a Nirvana song was available [Bryan Fuller]

Kylie To Korn is actually great fun. Pandora stations alter themselves when you thumb a song up or down. Down means you never hear it again; up means you hear it more and the song insinuates itself into the DNA of the station, pushing it more towards the thing you just approved. This is how one gets from Kylie to Korn. I made rules: I could not downvote a Kylie song, and once I thumbed something up I couldn't take that back.

The station is thus a map of how I got from Australian pop chanteuse to what is now a near-comprehensive 90s grunge station. "Lovefool" is on there, because at one point anything that sounded vaguely indie was a priority. So is something called "Space Cowboy" by somebody named The Jonzon Crew. I mean. The hats. Hell yes this was a good idea.

The main problem now is that the station is very good at playing stuff somewhere between great and tolerable but now I have to thumb stuff like Staind up as we try to stumble our way to... some Korn song. I literally could not name one. (Again, Korn is a metaphor.)

So here's the 2017 football season. As we work away from the Hoke-era-type substance, desperately thumbing up anything that looks like a functional offensive lineman, we reach a pleasant, if probably unsatisfying, plateau. Michigan has eight games they're going to be double-digit favorites in and four that will determine their year. One of them is going to be Nickelback—the thing does occasionally play Nickelback. We may have to not only endure a Staind song but feel like that song is not just past but prologue.

[Eric Upchurch]

Or maybe not. Look at that beautiful terror above. Michigan is still loaded in their front seven; they've got a Returning Harbaugh Quarterback. The roster is packed to the gills with blue chips. A freshman wide receiver might not suck. Capital-Y Years: there are going to be a lot of them coming up. It would be far from the weirdest thing in the history of college football if this was one of them.

Michigan test drives its new program in 2017. Flip on the radio. Every track could be the end of a journey that started with the Horror or a hot Australian lady, and ends with the most satisfying sports thing of your life. Or, yes okay, a Korn song.

By the end of last season, John Beilein whittled his rotation down to six core guys; three – including Derrick Walton, the heart of the team and its best player by far – left, and two who return (Muhammad-Ali Abdur-Rahkman and Duncan Robinson) are veteran role players seemingly without much further upside. Had Moe Wagner elected to follow DJ Wilson into the NBA Draft as another early entry, the Wolverines would be putting the weight of even more expectations and responsibility on transfers Jaaron Simmons and Charles Matthews.

While those two will still be critically important following the graduation of Walton and Zak Irvin, the return of Wagner gives Michigan a proven commodity to build around. Wagner isn’t without his flaws – particularly on the defensive side of the floor – but his breakout season offered a glimpse of his tantalizing skill-set playing as the five. Most importantly, he has plenty of room to grow: he’s younger than average for his class, he’s had to adjust to life halfway around the world from where he grew up, and he’s still transitioning from being a wing-like player to a true Big Ten big man.

As an offensive whiz and indifferent-at-best defender, Wagner embodies many of the best and worst stereotypes about Beilein basketball. Most obvious is that he’s a lethal pick-and-pop threat who unlocks lineups with near-perfect floor spacing; few big men can hit 39.5% from behind the arc on three 3-point attempts per game. Fewer big men can score from the low block, mid-post, and on face-up drives from the perimeter with the array of moves Moe has at his disposal. Somehow he managed to make an absurd 66.1% of his twos, typically a number that would indicate that he’s a “only catch the ball on pick and rolls and dunk it or lay it in” kind of player (he’s not). His true shooting percentage (which weighs 2P%, 3P%, and FT%) was the best in the Big Ten last season.

Wagner’s scoring ability makes him a key asset regardless of all other factors, but his role as Michigan’s de facto defensive anchor (by virtue of simply playing the five position) is problematic, to say the least. His pick-and-roll coverage has improved, but it’s apparent that he’s still inexperienced and has lack of comfort in those situations. He doesn’t contest shots inside the restricted area as a primary or help defender. He struggles against teams that play at a quicker tempo. He gets bodied too easily on the glass (UM’s team defensive rebounding rate fell from 47th nationally in 2015-16 to 212th last season – surely a mix of several factors contributed to that, Wagner’s increased playing time chief among them). Worst of all, he still picks up frustrating fouls that tend to limit his playing time.

Defensive technique and awareness don’t come easily to him, and that’s probably the biggest reason why he’s returning to Ann Arbor instead of starting his professional career. Development on that end will be crucial to Michigan’s success, but at the very least, Wagner’s likely to be the linchpin of another flamethrower offense and a matchup nightmare for most opposing centers. As a freshman, he was a little-used reserve who played fewer minutes than Ricky Doyle; as a sophomore, he was an above-average Big Ten starter. As a junior, he could be a star.

Zak Irvin made six hundred field goals at Michigan. Each one seemed like a minor miracle.

I say this out of admiration. Pick up a basketball, head to the park, and try to replicate Irvin's shot. To do this, stand pigeon-toed while holding the basketball low and in front of you like a hot casserole just out of the oven; with your hands on the sides of the ball, swing it above your head on a path that passes by your left front pocket; as the ball rises in front of your face, rotate your hands so your shooting hand is under the ball; lock your elbows at a 90-degree angle; flick your wrist to release at the apex of your jump; hold your follow-through at a 45-degree angle. It'll look something like this:

You won't make it. Certainly not the first time, and probably not on the hundredth, either.

Perhaps it shouldn't have been a surprise that Irvin's career was for a long time defined by its inconsistency.

After Irvin's freshman year, it was difficult to keep expectations in check. On a 2013-14 team loaded with NBA talent, he excelled in the role of unabashed gunner off the bench. He hoisted 146 three-pointers and made 43% of them, seamlessly replacing Nik Stauskas, who'd become the team's star, as the instant offense freshman who promised a whole lot more in the future.

Irvin's game, however, was extremely limited. He recorded all of 13 assists in 37 games. His defensive rebound rate was lower than Spike Albrecht's. Nearly 75% of his shots came from beyond the arc; according to hoop-math, all ten of his makes at the rim were assisted.

"The end crowns all. And that old common arbitrator, Time, will one day end it."

In Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida, the Trojan hero Hector gives an existential twist to the Latin phrase finis coronat opus: the end crowns the work. The original is a more forgiving statement; when a task is completed, the finished product justifies the effort. Hector, preparing for a fatal battle with Achilles, adds that cruelest of elements: time. Only so much of his fate rests in his own hands, for there are forces present no person can control.

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[left: Patrick Barron; right and center: Marc-Gregor Campredon]

Michigan lost at Illinois on January 11th, falling to 11-6 overall and 1-3 in the Big Ten. Their November dismantlings of Marquette and SMU had gone from promising augurs to cruel teases. The offense was merely good, the defense abominable. When the Illini's Maverick Morgan described Michigan as a "white collar" program, it rankled because it rang true.

Derrick Walton didn't spend his summer in the gym for this. He called a team meeting. When asked about the timing, the senior captain answered with his usual calm, but his words communicated a sense of urgency.

"It’s only so many games left.

"We’re hitting the mid stretch and the back stretch is coming soon. It’s time to make some noise. I feel like we are a ton better team than we’ve showed and our record doesn’t show it. I think we’re a lot better than we’re playing and guys are ready to show that."

In only so many games, Walton redefined his legacy from program guy to program legend, led a storybook turnaround, and shifted the perception of the coach whose offense he helped reshape.